My Lords, strangely, I am going to speak against the amendment, because of the second part. I am not sure why this amendment is not linked to the one about the private sector being able to compete against local government to do planning. In my mind they should go together. There is no way that the private sector will pick up any planning applications if it is only allowed to charge the current fee structure that we as councils are allowed to charge. That is because in the last three years the taxpayer subsidy to planning has been £450 million. The private sector will not engage on that.
Without the second part being in there, it would allow local government to be put in the right place to prevent the private sector being able to take the work at a subsidised rate for itself. The risk seems to be that, when we get to that part of Bill, private sector firms will be allowed to charge excessive fees and make money, safe in the knowledge that there will be an expectation that they will be more sympathetic to the applicant. I think a true level playing field would be one in which we charge full cost recovery and for those applications that are minor, where that would not be possible, there needs be a different mechanism. That is why I cannot support the amendment as written.
On the next amendment, on the retrospective planning application, again, we need some way to penalise serial offenders who wilfully abuse the planning system by not seeking planning permission in the right way when they first set out on their projects. Again, I am not sure how that should be worded in a way that will deliver it to best effect for everybody, because there will be genuine cases where some people simply were not aware that they needed to make a planning application. So any amendment must recognise that for me to be able to support it. As I have said before about any amendment that has “local government must” in it, there is no way I can support the third part of that amendment, where it says that we “must consult”. I do not think that local government ever “must” do anything. I think we should always “may” do something.